The barrier

College degree, college degree, the dream of every African parent to see their children become educated. Most African parents will give 100% support to their children to become successful, educationally! African parents' wildest taught are” education is the key to success” and “education is better than silver and gold”.

It’s with this parenting philosophy many African youths have unfollowed their dreams, instead of following the advice from “papa and mama”. Here is what Simon Sinek once said “working for something you don’t care about is called stress, but working every day for something you care about is called passion”, where is the passion in our African youth? Again, Gary Vaynerchuk said “look yourself in the mirror and ask, what I want to do every day for the rest of my life…? Do that” ever since then I have continuously asked myself this question several times and then realize “Gary Veynerchuk” was asking me if I was doing or following what I love best, my passion, my talent, and my beliefs.

Without any dispute on any fact, education is important yes! But again what we learn from our institutions is the complete opposite of what we face in our work. I have never for once studied accounting, nor any financial related programs but I have handled way better financial deals, negotiation, and transaction than many who went to study. For over two years in doing various businesses, I have profited and loses, and at the same time learn from those experiences. I can read and analyze a financial statement, make decisions from income and expenses, profit and loss, cash flow and finance projection. All of these I learned by doing the work and not buy reading four years in college to have a financial education.

The go mindset

Again, I never study business management but I have managed three businesses and owned one which I run successfully. Life, in general, is based on experiences, the failures, mistakes, and successes are what we learned from to face our tomorrow challenges. It is by doing and doing every day makes us stronger, ready, improve and to outward our problems every day.

I went to college to study diploma in software engineering for two years, and all I learned was syntax, logistics, and basic programming languages but for once never built any software. My point is institutions label such programs as a way of marketing their institution. Imagine I went to study so-called “software engineering” but I did all the basics, why not renamed the program as “basic programming” or better still “introduction to programming”.

Discover your passion

At 20’s I know you might have a warm appetite for several things, so was I … but again any of those were not my passion. You will always hear “follow your passion” as if there’s this exclusive club of people who are fortunate enough to be doing exactly what they were put on this earth. What about you, are you doing what exactly what you love and have passion for? Here is a few tips on how to discover your passion, it works for me, hope it does for you too.

A) Identify your interest: look at things you have been doing since childhood to present, from school days and now, pen them down. See what areas you spent your time on e.g.; Google, social media, sport, TV and what most you enjoy.

B) Identify your strength: what are all the things you have done, list them down. Rate yourself in areas like interpersonal skills, collaboration, communication, etc. Align what you have done with what you are good at and most enjoy, then forget about everything else.

C) Stick with it: discovering your why/passion is a process and not an easy one, but once you found it-stick with it, give it your all. Find and create value for yourself and improve constantly, if you want to expand your skills and try something new, ask.

Make Commitment

Once you have discovered that passion and areas of interest, make a commitment towards it then you will see the fulfillment that comes with following your passion. Spend much time doing it every day, also network with the right people around the same field. Find out what they do and how they got there, and ask for advice. Tell them what you are good at and most enjoy, get feedback and improve. Repeat this process and you will constantly learn new things every moment then. Nonetheless, go and work for some of this mentor. When I was just learning website development, I worked for so many mentors and individuals, getting myself involved in projects while learning and improving myself. Remember I place passion and commitment first before reward, but those time invested returns fulfillment for me.

Start a Venture

Once you have got some amount of experience start something, be it a business, freelancing, consulting or training, just start something.



-  Mark Fillee Jumu (Maju)